Aquilino Peña, founding parner of Kibo Ventures, has been appointed as president of the Spanish Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (ASCRI) for the 2020-2022 period. Aquilino will replace Miguel Zurita, Managing Partner & Co-CIO at Altamar Capital.
Kibo Ventures is a venture capital firm with EUR115 million in AUM and which has invested in more than 50 high-growth companies such as Flywire, Carto, Job&Talent, Devo, Defined Crowd or Paack, among others. Kibo Ventures is a firm with an international profile, with portfolio companies based in Spain, USA, UK, Canada, Portugal and Germany, and which has co-invested together with more than 35 high-level international funds.
Aquilino has been linked to the interactive sector since 1995 and from multiple angles: entrepreneur, operator and investor. As an entrepreneur, Aquilino was co-founder of Submarino.com, a Pioneer company in the e-commerce sector in Spain and Latin America, which completed an IPO in Brasil in 2004.
As an operator, he has managed more than 50 portales, including Orange.es, wanadoo.es, Starmedia.com, el Rincón del vago, Autocity, Telecinco.com and the portals of the Hachette group. Orange’s network of portals became the 2nd largest audience in Spanish with 40M users per month and 10th worldwide.
As an investor, Aquilino has been an angel investor in more than 15 companies such as Volotea, Acierto, Bodeboca or the ISDI business school, among others.
Additionally, he is a member of the Executive Committee of @adigital. Furthermore, he has been Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), member of the Board of the Spanish Association of Electronic Commerce, member of the Council of the Spanish Association of Advertisers (AEA) and Executive Director of the European Internet Advertising Association (EIAA), among other relevant forums.
In his professional life prior to Kibo Ventures, he was CEO of Mediaedge:cia (the largest WPP media agency in Spain) for Spain and Portugal. Previously, he was General Manager of the interactive business of Orange, Marketing and Customer Service Director of eresMas / Wanadoo, founder and CEO of submarino.com in Spain and consultant for The Boston Consulting Group in Madrid and Sao Paulo.
Aquilino holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a degree in Law and Economics from the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas – ICADE.
